My name is Gloria Hill and I am a Shelton. I am a Shelton by way of my late paternal grandmother, who was a Shelton. I mention this up front for a good reason. I want to answer the call of Angela Shelton (Documentary: "Searching for Angela Shelton"). I am aware that Angela Shelton does not actually share the Shelton name with me and other Sheltons across the country. But she and I do share a common experience. What happened to her as a child, happened to me, too.
To all the Angela Sheltons in America who have confronted their pasts, be it child molestation, or whatever, I share your unfortunate stories of molestation. As a young girl, mine came at the hands of three adult males (at different times), who lived in the tough neighborhood that I grew up in called the Block. Fortunately, I was able to escape each of these perpetrators before the worst happened. For this reason, I consider myself one of the more fortunate victims.
It was 1992 when I first decided to free myself and tell my story. It took me more than twelve years of stops and starts to finally complete it. What started out as an autobiography somewhere along the way evolved into a novel -- Thoroughbred My House, My Block. I chose to write my story under the penname, G.Dove Hill, in order to spare my family and friends any pain or embarrassment (see Books). A great deal of this novel is based on my life growing up in abject poverty in a family with a father who succumbed to alcoholism, dashing many of the hopes and dreams that my family had.
Thoroughbred: My House, My Block, my first novel, focuses on the early years, ages seven to fifteen, of the main character, Tenya Jackson (nicknamed Li'l Thoroughbred and later as Pony by her father). It is she who narrates the story from beginning to end (see excerpt below).
"My true name is Tenya. Tenya Jackson. But Mama had first named me Odena Lee Jackson. She liked that name well enough to want to saddle me, her first baby girl, with it. Tenya Jackson suited me just fine. Much better than Odena Lee, which is the name that appears on my birth certificate, with a line drawn through it, and the name, Tenya handwritten above it. Later, Daddy started calling me Pony. I guess calling me that made him feel he had his very own little pony. As I got a bit older, he branded me his Li'l Thoroughbred. I didn't know what he meant, at first. But this was his way of telling me that he wanted me to feel I was special ..."
So says Pony Jackson, the mesmerizing narrator of this heart-wrenching and poignantly written novel by G. Dove Hill (penname).
My journey as a young girl was an arduous one fraught with many obstacles, challenges, disappointments, and a precious few sprinklings of joy here and there. I have experienced family turmoil, street chaos, disappointment after disappointment, depression, feelings of isolation, distrust, rejection, and abandonment. When you read my story, told as a novel, you will have some idea of the journey.
